Much about the early human exploration and occupation of the Yellowstone area remains a mystery. Let’s be real, the climate here is extreme. Attempts to settle this land in days prior to having heated seats in the family Land Rover may have been somewhat discouraging…
Guide to Yellowstone
Early People of Yellowstone
While the Yellowstone area may appear rugged and uninviting for ancient settlement, archeological finds including projectile points and crude stone tools provide evidence of human presence in the area more than 11,000 years ago.
The last period of ice age glaciation in Yellowstone ended some 13,000 years ago, so we can determine that human activity in this region began somewhere between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago.
Hunters and Gatherers
These determined ancestors probably hunted large mammals such as mammoth and bison, while also foraging for berries, seeds and roots. As the climate slowly warmed and dried, the large mammals of the ice age became extinct, as they were adapted to the cold glaciated world of a previous time. Hunting habits evolved to seek smaller game and early humans likely sought summer settlements in the valleys of surrounding mountains that lay abundant with the wild game that sustained their families and tribal groups.
Archeologists have documented more than 1,800 sites in Yellowstone that provide evidence for such activity. Artifacts found at these sites vary greatly in age, the oldest being an 11,000-year-old Clovis type Obsidian spear point that was found near the park’s north entrance.
Such sites mostly contain projectile points, while some contain concentrations of burned organic artifacts, such as bones, which can be examined to determine exactly what types of animals were being butchered. Such studies show that Yellowstone’s early humans were hunting bear, bison, deer, elk, mountain lion, sheep and wolves.
History Told by Tools
Due to the acidic nature of the area’s soil, most artifacts that would have been made from basketry, bone, textile of wood have long been dissolved. This limits the scope of most scientific study to stone tools. Despite this limitation, archeologists can piece together generations of advances in tool design improvements, thanks to locations such as Malin Creek, where ancient campsites provide evidence of five distinct periods of indigenous presence spanning more than 9,000 years.
It appears that ancient peoples began to increase their use of the Yellowstone area beginning about 3,000 years ago. Slowly, the use of prehistoric killing tools such as the atlatl, (leveraged spear-thrower) faded in favor of the more accurate bow and arrow. People in these ages also began to construct traps to corral bison and sheep.
As mentioned before, Yellowstone’s extreme climate effectively prevented any form of permanent cultural assembly in its mountains. However, as time advanced, the surrounding lands became home to various tribes of Native American settlers. Often, the hunting, gathering and trading practices of tribes from the Great Plains, Great Basin, and Plateau Indian cultures converged in the area that is today the park.
The Horse Changes History
The 1700s brought the acquisition of the horse, which historians observe would fundamentally alter the method by which natives interacted with the land. The introduction of this beast of burden allowed faster travel and provided the ability to move larger amounts of goods. This affected hunting and trade patterns, as well as the ability to interact with distant groups who may have rarely came in contact prior to the arrival of the horse.
The Tukudika People
Not all tribes adopted the horse however. Interestingly, the Tukudika, who were descended from the Shoshone and were often referred to as the Sheep Eaters, due to their diet of bighorn sheep, preferred pedestrian travel. This was due largely to their migratory pattern of following the sheep into steep, mountainous cliffs.
The Tukudika used dogs to transport meat and goods and used the sheep (along with deer, elk and bison) for more than just food, making garments from the skins, tools from the bones horns of such prey.
Some have claimed that the Tududika were year-round residents of Yellowstone. Early park superintendent Philetus Norris, for whom the Norris Geyser Basin is named, claimed that the Sheepeater wintered in the park, although this remains a theory for which no supporting evidence is yet found.
Yellowstone’s Many People
Oral histories among surrounding groups indicate that ancestors to the Bannock, Blackfeet, Cayuse, Coeur d’Alene, Crow, Nez Perce, Shoshone and Umatilla, among numerous other tribes, used popular trails to access various areas of what is today the national park. Some 27 separate tribes have ancestral roots which lead right back to the Greater Yellowstone area.
These area residents came to hunt, to gather plants and various minerals, to quarry precious useful stones such as obsidian, to trade with other groups and to celebrate life itself during sacred ceremonies held at locations which today welcome wide-eyed visitors in metal coffins from around the world.
The park is today, one of five pilot sites for National Park Service’s Ethnographic Resources Inventory database, which gathers information about numerous ethnographic resources in the area.
The park service meets periodically with tribal representatives to consider measures to protect such resources and to consider management options related to cultural materials in the area and to consult with park leaders about wildlife management. Many local tribes have a spiritual tie to Yellowstone’s animals, such as bison, and connect the survival of such species to the survival of their very own people.
Roche Jaune
In the late 1700s, French fur traders began traveling along the “Roche Jaune”, as they referred to the Yellowstone River. It is doubtful that any of these trappers ventured into the upper areas of the Yellowstone basin, but they were likely aware of the hydrothermal features due to their contact with numerous native tribes that probably told them of such wonders.
John Colter
In the early 1800s, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, sent by President Thomas Jefferson to find the fabled “northwest passage”, passed by the northern area of the Yellowstone area, but never went into what is today the park. However, on the return trip, one member, John Colter, was granted an early honorable discharge so that he could guide a couple of trappers from Illinois into the upper Missouri River area and to the Yellowstone River.
Colter departed Lewis and Clark in August of 1806 and escorted the trappers, Forest Hancock and Joseph Dickson, into the northern Yellowstone area. Somewhere along the way, the group experienced a falling out and Dickson left the group. It is unclear exactly where Colter and Hancock wintered over, but some claim that Colter journeyed from their camp into the Sunlight Basin area, near the northeastern boundary of the park, observing hydrothermal areas near what is today Cody, Wyoming.
Colter & Yellowstone – Round 2
In the summer of 1807, Colter headed back toward civilization. However, just before he reached St. Louis, Missouri, he encountered a west-bound expedition led by Manuel Lisa, who would soon found the Missouri Fur Company. Lisa’s group already held several men that had served on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and Lisa promptly recruited Colter to join his forces. The mountain man was once again, bound for the Yellowstone area.
This group soon reached the eastern side of Yellowstone, where they constructed a trading post which they named Fort Raymond, in honor of Lisa’s son. Colter, being one of the most competent members of the group, was soon dispatched to explore surrounding lands and to initiate contact with various native tribes, including the Crow, in order to establish trade that would bring business to the Fort Raymond trading post.
In October of 1807, Colter departed alone with a rifle and his pack. His route through the Yellowstone wilderness is uncertain, as he left no written description. However, it is believed that he traveled more than 500 miles in the dead of winter, passing such sites as Lake Yellowstone and Tower Fall, before moving southward toward the Teton Range and Jackson Lake. He returned to Fort Raymond in the spring of 1808, with reports of steaming geysers, bubbling pots of mud and boiling pools of water.
Colter’s Hell
Few believed his tales of otherworldly scenes and dismissed his descriptions somewhat jokingly as “Colter’s Hell”. Today, the exact location of the thermal features witnessed by Colter remains the subject of debate. Many sources claim that his sightings of such activity were limited to the area along the Shoshone River, near Cody. While such accuracy may never be fully attained by historians, what is clear is that John Colter was most likely the first white man to ever enter the upper Yellowstone region.
Jim Bridger
Nearly a generation would pass before a colorful mountain character named Jim Bridger entered the fabled land of gloomy lore. A young Bridger found his way into Yellowstone in the early 1820s and emerged with tall tales of “petrified birds” that sang “petrified songs”, along with fishing yarns in which there were lakes teaming with fish.
Bridger claimed he would catch a fish in one spot, then swing his line over a few feet to dunk the fish into a steaming hot spring, cooking the fish while still on the line. He reported stumbling upon a great canyon, so deep that a man could shout into it before bedding down for the evening, and be awakened by his echo the next morning.
Over the following decades, fur trappers and traders would make their way through the region. Osborne Russell visited the area numerous times in the 1830s, publishing a book entitled “Journey of a Trapper” in which he recalled accounts of his trapping expeditions in the park, including his interactions with the Sheepeater people. This publication remained the most accurately detailed description of the landscape until the 1870s.
In the decades between, tales of wild mountains and adventures were wound beside campfires these incredible stories of western lore would make their way over the plains and into taverns and shops throughout the west and midwestern United States, fueling public speculation about the unknown wonders of the fabled Yellowstone.
Guide to Yellowstone
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